It accounts for about half of the company’s profits. G.E. said that its industrial business, making things ranging from power generators to jet engines to solar panels, was still doing well, especially outside the United States.

The credit crisis, G.E. added, will not be short-lived.

The company said that “difficult conditions in the financial services markets are not likely to improve in the near future.”

In the last two weeks, through market gyrations, G.E. emphasized in a letter to investors posted on its Web site and, in replies to questions, that it was a rock-solid, very conservatively managed finance company — a world apart from Wall Street’s troubles.

But on Thursday, G.E. lowered its earnings guidance for 2008 from $19.5 billion to $21 billion, or $1.95 to $2.10 a share. Previous guidance had been for profit was $22 billion to $23 billion, or $2.20 to $2.30 a share.

To conserve cash, G.E. said it would suspend its stock buyback program, trim its reliance on short-term commercial paper and reduce its leverage further.

“This is a capitulation quarter for G.E. as it acknowledges that it cannot escape the current credit market turmoil unscathed,” Deane Dray, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a report on Thursday.

“The company is taking a number of welcomed steps to reduce leverage and diversify its funding strategy.”

Many companies besides G.E. will report disappointing profits for the remainder of the year, according to analysts and economists. The biggest impact, certainly, will be on companies in the financial sector, but the larger issue is how deeply and rapidly the credit crisis spills over into the rest of the corporate and consumer economy.

“We’re seeing a very broad-based weakening of profits, with only a few sectors still holding up like energy, agriculture and perhaps health care,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “And G.E. is a good measure of the corporate economy because it is in so many businesses.”

The weakening economy has not yet hit capital spending, but analysts say that will probably change as the financial pinch makes it more difficult and expensive for companies to borrow funds. In the second quarter, capital spending by American companies rose a solid 5.2 percent.

After the dot-com collapse — an earlier bubble that burst — capital spending fell 4.5 percent in 2001 and 9.4 percent more in 2002. The retreat this time is not expected to be so precipitous. “But we’re going to see a worsening of capital spending because of the intensification of the credit crunch,” said John Lonski, an economist for Moody’s Capital Markets Group.

Over the years, companies have on average reported profits that exceed analysts’ estimates by about 3 percent, according to Thomson Reuters, a financial research firm. That, of course, is partly because companies intentionally provide analysts with guidance that is cautious, because their stock prices rise only when their performance surpasses the consensus of analysts.

But starting in the second half of 2007, the usual pattern was reversed, largely because of the troubles of large mortgage lenders and Wall Street firms. Since then, reported results in total have consistently fallen short of estimates, by 5.6 percent in the most recent quarter that ended in June, said John Butters, an analyst at Thomson Reuters.

Corporate earnings next year are expected to improve largely because 2008 has been so weak. Corporate profits will fall 8 percent this year, predicts Edward Yardeni, an independent economist and investment strategist, whose estimates are lower than the consensus projections. Next year, he expects corporate profits to rise about 14 percent (the consensus, as compiled by Thomson Reuters, is for 24 percent).

Without a economic bailout package, Mr. Yardeni said he would be cutting his estimates further for next year. “It should be a safety net for the economy and corporate profits,” he said.

GE Capital does not have the high-risk, exotic securities that got Wall Street firms into trouble, and it got out of home lending in the United States in 2007. (Its mortgages are overseas, with Britain its largest portfolio, where it holds $28 billion in home loans.) And G.E. executives portray the moves they announced on Thursday as giving a solid finance company — with a triple-A credit rating — even more ballast in uncertain times.

“We run the company for the long term and are taking the actions expected of a Triple-A company,” said Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chief executive. “Given the recent dramatic developments in the financial markets, we have made some tough decisions to further reduce risk and strengthen our balance sheet while maintaining our dividend commitment.”

G.E., analysts say, is not a company with toxic securities to sell to the government in a bailout. Still, investors certainly treated G.E. as a company, like so many, that would gain from the stability and improved business conditions resulting from a bailout.

After reducing its profit guidance, G.E. shares fell more than 3 percent on Thursday morning, but recovered on news reports that Congress and the White House were moving toward an agreement. G. E. shares rose 4.4 percent for the day, closing at $25.68 a share, up $1.09.